Injured driver lay 36 hours along freeway

Barriers blocked others from seeing Houston man

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FRIENDSWOOD, Texas — A motorist injured in a crash lay paralyzed in the middle of a freeway with a broken neck for 36 hours before he was rescued.

Ed Theisen’s body was blocked from view by Gulf Freeway traffic barricades in this Houston suburb. The 46-year-old survived a night alone on the concrete, unable to move or summon help.

“Someone riding in the back of a pickup truck spotted him and called police,” Debora Rodeffer-Theisen, his wife, said Monday after her husband emerged from surgery.

“The officer poked him with a nightstick thinking he was a dead body, but he was there and he was very much alive.”

Wife passed by twice
Worried that he had been carjacked, Theisen’s wife drove past the area twice. He was on his side, staring at a concrete wall, his shouts inaudible to passing traffic.

Doctors later determined that Theisen had broken his neck and suffered a spinal cord injury.

Theisen had been rear-ended March 22 and was exchanging insurance information with the other driver. To avoid walking in heavy oncoming traffic, Theisen had stepped between concrete barriers when he felt weak.